The soldiers listened to his story intently. They looked at him with a bit more awe and respect. Childers smiled and began to work with the IEDs again, turning their attention back to the task at hand.
“Ok, so look here. Once this is done, be careful as these IEDs are now live. We only have five of the blasting caps, so we must use these IEDs carefully. I want them placed inside these five buildings lining the street here,” he said, pointing to three buildings on the right, and two buildings on the left in the center of the village.
“We are going to use these IEDs for our secondary attack. Now, the rest of these 152mm artillery rounds are going to be placed in these vehicles lining the highway here, and along these four street gutters,” Childers explained as he showed them where he wanted the remaining artillery rounds placed.
One of the soldiers interrupted to ask, “ — Sergeant Childers, if we don’t have any additional blasting caps, how are we going to remote detonate these other IEDs?”
Smiling at the question, he reached down and pulled out a roll of detonation cord. “We are going to use some det. cord for these. The ragheads in Iraq used to do this to us. It was pretty effective but pay attention, this is also dangerous and can kill you if you screw it up. Just like with the blasting cap, you place some of it down into the fuse well, then we wrap it around the round. We are going to daisy chain the remaining artillery rounds along the side of the highway in these abandoned vehicles here,” he pointed down the road to the group of vehicles he was referring to.
“In this case, we’ll have to trigger this manually. We’ll run the trigger wire back to this building here, which I’ll be in. I will personally trigger this IED when the Russians enter the kill zone.” The cacophony of battle down the road at the airport was growing in intensity. It wouldn’t be long before the Russians pushed their way through their ambush.
“Now listen up,” he said to the soldiers, wanting to make sure he had their full attention. “I want two of our M240s set up on the right side of the road in these buildings here,” he explained, pointing to the structures.
“Then, I want the other two M240s placed here, on the left side of the road. This will create a crossfire for our machine guns. Now, we only have two AT4s… I want one on each side of the road so we have good covering fire. When the Russians move through the ambush, I will detonate the first string of IEDs. If the Russians follow their standard doctrine, which they have thus far, they will dismount their troops from the BMPs and BTRs.”
“Those troops are going to fan out and move forward to clear the village,” Childers continued. “That is when I want you M240 gunners to let ‘em have it. They will charge the ambush just like we would, only this next time round, they are going to charge right into our second ambush.” His face lit up with a devilish grin, almost like he relished the destruction he was about to unleash on the enemy.
“When the claymores go off, they will send additional tanks and armored vehicles forward to push through the ambush. You M240 gunners need to get the hell out of dodge and head to the rally point once you hear the explosions. If you stay too long, I guarantee one of those Russian tanks is going to put a High Explosive (HE) round into your position.” Childers paused to look at the M240 crews to make sure they understood what he was telling them. He wanted them to stick around long enough to hit the infantry, but they needed to get out of there once the tanks started to move forward again or they would get blown up.
The men all nodded.
Luke pressed on. “Once you guys break contact, I’ll send the SMS to the IEDs, and hopefully, they will destroy the second group of tanks and armored vehicles.”
He sighed loudly, then looked back at his young soldiers and added, “Look, this is going to be tough. It’s going to be bloody and it’s going to happen fast. The key to this ambush is going to be speed. So, once it’s time to get out of here, you need to run like your life depends on it to the rally point. Don’t try to be heroes. Just do your jobs, remember your training, and let’s try to get out of this alive, all right?”
The soldiers all nodded in agreement, and responded with, “Yes, Sergeant.” Then they went back to work, getting everything set up.
Once Lieutenant Taylor got back to the cluster of houses that sat along the highway, he briefed his men on what the other platoons were going to do, and what their plan of action was once they carried out this ambush. They would hit the Russians hard once they walked into their trap and then quickly race to the next ambush point and try to repeat the process. He showed them on the map the second point and where the additional artillery shells had been placed so they could find them when they arrived. He also showed them where they would rendezvous with their unit once they crossed back into the new NATO lines.
Several Ukrainian army units streamed past their positions at this point. They looked ragged and beaten up. Most of the vehicles had scars cut into them from bullets and shrapnel. The soldiers looked dirty and exhausted — many of them had bandages covering bloody wounds.
Childers had to give the Ukrainian Army credit; they fought fiercely against the Russians, despite being heavily outnumbered. Most of the units were just simply outmatched by the Russians. It was also hard to integrate them into the fight with NATO as their unit’s communications and digital equipment was not interoperable with the US or NATO. The electronic jamming the Russians were using heavily was becoming a problem in keeping the multi-national units communicating. However, for some unknown reason, the Russians were not actively jamming cellular service (of course, this was also a lot easier for them to eavesdrop on).
Most of the US Special Forces who had been working with the Ukrainians as military advisors were essentially stuck with those same units, acting as liaison officers and coordinators between US and NATO Forces. The interoperability problem was something that had to be overcome, but until additional communications equipment could be integrated into the Ukrainian Army, the SF soldiers and their equipment would have to be the stopgap solution. While this was not ideal, it did mean the Ukrainian units had seasoned combat veterans to help advise them during some of the heaviest fighting.
The next three hours went by with a near-constant stream of Russian ground attack aircraft and helicopters flying all over the place, attacking anything that moved below. As the platoon sat waiting in the village for the final allied troops to withdraw past them, they saw a pair of Su-25s dive down on what was most likely the remaining Ukrainian forces. These fighters were armored like the American A-10s, and they carried dozens of bombs, rocket pods, missiles and a 30mm auto-cannon.
Thump, thump, BOOM, BOOM. As the black smoke and fire rose in the distance from the latest Su-25 bombing run, Childers thought, “I wish we could shoot them down… it’s too bad that we ran out of Stinger missiles yesterday. There’s no more to be had, either.”
From time to time, they would see a massive aerial battle, but it was hard to tell who was winning and losing. Very seldom did they see an F-16 swoop down and plaster some Russian armor. When they did, they were quickly shot at by multiple air-defense vehicles.